Little Deaths (2011)

I've been rolling the British-made Little Deaths around in my head since I watched it a few days ago, wondering what exactly to say about it. If you can't stop thinking about a horror movie - does that make it good? This is an odd one.

Little Deaths, as the name and the artwork suggests, is about sex and death. Two staples in our genre. Here we have three shorts collected together but without any wraparound or connecting threads. I suppose it's a bit like The ABC's of Death, with nothing but a common theme to unite the work.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I feel it works better with larger projects (like the alphabet). For this, when the credits rolled after the third story, it felt undercooked, somehow? I hadn't been keeping track of the time but I had assumed there'd be more than three segments in this anthology.

Anyhow, this trio of tales has elements of sex, death, and also revenge. House & Home (written/directed by Sean Hogan) seems to generally be considered the best of the three - at least judging by the Letterboxd reviews. It concerns an affluent couple whose hobbies include kidnapping and abusing young homeless women. This is a pretty typical "they picked on the wrong girl this time!" story, though the reveal wasn't quite what I was expecting. It's fine enough, but the degradation that comes before the payoff made me feel uneasy and kind of exhausted. 

Mutant Tool (written/directed by Andrew Parkinson) is bonkers but loses a lot of its impact due to its plodding plot. I am a fan of stories about imprisoned and exploited entities, so long as they escape and the captors get their comeuppance. This doesn't exactly happen here, but the ending is satisfactorily dark.

The third and final tale is Bitch (written/directed by Simon Rumley), and it's the one I've thought the most about post-viewing, but I honestly can't decide if I like it or not. 

Here, we witness the day-to-day goings on in an abusive relationship between Claire (Kate Braithwaite) and Pete (Tom Sawyer). Claire is mean and manipulative; she does what she wants and makes Pete feel bad until he goes along with it, treating him like shit in front of his friends as well as in private. They have a kinky "puppy play" situation where Pete wears a mask and leash, crawls around on all fours, and gets pegged by Claire (and sleeps in a kennel in the spare room) but we get the distinct impression that this is more for her enjoyment than his. Ultimately, after she literally fucks one of his friends right in front of him, Pete breaks. He begins to set up a revenge plot that preys upon her deepest fears.

This story is tough to watch, it goes without saying, as abuse is never a fun thing to witness. Sawyer does well in portraying Pete as a sweet bloke trapped in his relationship. He seems constantly agonised and yet the crumbs of affection or interest Claire throws him, plus the hope that things will improve are enough to keep him from leaving. 

Claire is - aptly, given the title - shown almost entirely as a bitch. A horrible, selfish, abusive woman. Her moments of phobia are the only glimpse we get into something deeper or less repulsive about this character. As the villain, I guess this makes sense, but it's a shame to see such broad strokes used. Tackling an abusive relationship from the lesser-represented side of a male survivor is refreshing, but painting Claire so one-dimensional makes it come across more like Rumley just fucking hates women. Her unpleasant fate is not entirely clear, and I hope this was the creator's intent and not an oversight. I won't spoil it, but I have my reasons for disagreeing with a few reads I've seen of what becomes of her.

(aside: well... yikes. I just found out that Rumley also directed the most upsetting segment of the aforementioned The ABC's of Death: P is for Pressure. So honestly, I'm not going to waste too much time wondering what his motivation was here).

I think what got to me most about Bitch was its use of music as it's made clear what Pete is doing. An emotive, uplifting instrumental plays over this montage, stopping with jarring immediacy on a shot of him weeping at what he's done. It's my favourite part of the entirety of Little Deaths, though I'm not sure it's enough to redeem the whole thing...

This is streaming on Shudder at time of writing. It's barely over 1hr30 so if you feel like gulping down three odd little stories, you could do a lot worse??

Sorority Row (2009)

Shot with dark, grainy, frenetic abandon (like an early 2000's music video) and, a mere 9 years on, pretty fucking gross and insanely obvious in its male gaze, Sorority Row is a remake, based on the script for the 1983 horror film The House on Sorority Row. For a film supposedly about sisterhood, the directing and writing team were all men. And you can tell.

There's frequent, pointless lack of clothes from sorority sisters who looked so similar I had no idea who was dying and who was surviving; jokes about how it's okay to be roofied; questionable doctor/patient power dynamic sex in exchange for meds... Just, no. The kills were not good enough to redeem all this.

There's far better out there. Best thing about this entire mess was Carrie Fisher in a bit part. 

Cabin Fever (2002) & Hostel (2005)

Do you like Eli Roth? I can't make up my mind. I kind of accidentally watched two of his films back-to-back the other night.

Both Cabin Fever and Hostel show us a group of friends way out of their element, far from home and under threat. Both are satisfyingly (and practically, effects speaking) gory and gross, and both were strong enough in premise and critical/audience reception to have spawned sequels and remakes. Let's take a little look at them...

Even though I've never considered myself an Eli Roth "fan" as such, I remember having an appreciation for his work. Sure, it's a little immature, but it comes from a love of the genre, right?

Hostel's Natalya (Barbara Nedeljakova)

To focus first on the women in these films (because that's where my representation interests lay most heavily), I have to give Roth his due; there's an evolution from the standard "helpless and topless" female characters. Natalya (above) is actually by far the most interesting character in Hostel: she's presented in more than one dimension and has something approaching a character arc! Natalya begins as a sexually liberated hook-up, and progresses through lure to full on traitor, with her appearance following the disintegration of her morality. More thought went into that than I remembered, to be honest.

Cabin Fever has another strong brunette in Marcy (Cerina Vincent). She is comfortable with her sexuality (which I guess in these films amounts to "is willing to get naked" but I'm not judging - women like sex!) and she's also brave and capable.

She's also the bum in this Texas Chainsaw Massacre homage shot!

Female representation is, surprisingly, not as poor as I recalled. There are still ample scenes of sex (centred on the male experience, of course) and boobs, but at least we have characters who are ultimately more than their body parts. They are somewhat multi-faceted personalities, not just a walking pair of tits.

Male characters... don't fare so well. Let's just say that the most striking thing on this rewatch was the reminder that early 2000's Roth sure did a fine line in absolute douchebags. From Bert (James DeBello, below left) in Cabin Fever to all three male leads in Hostel, if you ever feel an inexplicable need to hear characters call one another "fag" and "gay" repeatedly, then you're in luck, I guess?!

Cabin Fever's Jeff (Joey Kern, above right) experiences the best/worst reward for his selfish arseholeness, in another horror homage moment at the film's climax. Having saved himself from infection by abandoning his friends, he staggers out of his hiding place and back to the cabin. In a less shocking but still cool nod to hero Ben's fate in Night of the Living Dead, he's promptly shot and killed by police.

In terms of gore, I feel like it's kind of redundant to comment on at this point. Hostel shows us so much realistic violence that it was rolled into the whole "torture porn" debate. Cabin Fever too, is stomach-churningly gruesome (the shaving scene!) but comes under less fire due to the intent; sick shit is happening to these kids, but it's not directly at the hands of others gaining pleasure from it. In Hostel, people are deliberately captured, sold, sat down and tortured. It all looks very real.

To some this is too much, it's a step too far to show such extreme pain with no real message behind it. Personally, I use the "torture porn" label as a way to know what the movie is about, and gauge if I'm in the mood for it, but it's not a deal breaker by any means. Experiencing the pushing of boundaries is all part of being a horror fan, for me. And if the characters are set up the right way, well, I want to see those kills. Not everything has to have a message!

And if we're talking sick stuff, I'll take this opportunity to say that I've a real soft spot for films that use sexual arousal and infection as an interchangeable/confused notion. The scene with Paul (teen Jo crush Rider Strong) and Karen (Jordan Ladd) in bed, where he's trying to initiate something and moves his hand under the sheets, only to take it out a minute later covered in blood and goo...

Contracted plays with this too, when the main character passes on her virus to a lover and her putrefying pussy is mistaken for being wet from sexual arousal. It's so sick, it's a little questionable if you think about it too much... but I kind of love it.

Both of these are on US Netflix at time of writing, and worth revisiting if it's been a while since you've seen them and are happy to take them for what they are. Roth certainly knows what works for an uncomplicated and few-holds-barred horror movie, and he clearly loves being part of the genre. The cringey homophobic language is hard to stomach, and no one is going to fault you if that in itself means a hard pass to revisit them. Honestly though, they were not quite as "from a mind of a ten year old boy" as my memory had me believe. I'm not sure how comfortable I am admitting I was pleasantly surprised by how much I still enjoyed them.

It must be said though that the director cameo in Cabin Fever is one of the worst I've ever seen.

Edited to add: Ugh EVERYONE IS TRASH. So I checked rotten apples and even though nothing comes up there, this interview (the gross stuff is in number 3) is troubling. It's no real surprise, and that in itself is a shame.

*shrug* It's your call but there's probably as good or better shit to be watching without thinly-veiled homophobia, made by a sexist douchebag.

Last edit on Feb 1, 2019.